Tension between sexuality and religion in “the foundations of the earth”

a dialogical analysis of the constitutive heterodiscursivity

Abstract

This article aims to unveil and analyze the heterodiscursivity around the tension between sexuality and religion in “The Foundations of the Earth,” a short story by the African-American author Randall Kenan. Based on the Circle’s dialogism and studies that focus on this tension, we noticed that the short story becomes an arena of multiple social discourses that are dialogically related to the authoritative discourse of heteronormativity. Besides, we found in Maggie, the short story’s protagonist, the ongoing process of ideological formation that occurs through the destabilization of hegemonic discourses and in Gabriel, Maggie’s grandson’s partner, the discursive other that becomes, in this otherness relation, the propelling agent of destabilization towards respect to diversity.